While the book is mainly going to be about and from my perspective, I’d like to make it a little more comprehensive by including completely anonymous perspectives from others. I’d also like to make sure some assumptions that I’m making are correct, and the best way to do that is to get feedback from people other than myself.

So if you wouldn’t mind helping out, please take a moment to think about and respond to the following questions.

I realize these are intensely personal questions, so please feel free to respond to these anonymously. You can do so by entering a fake name and email in the comment boxes. Even if you do give me your real name, I will not use it in the book manuscript.

1) What is one of your earliest memories concerning something sexual? How old were you when it occurred?

2) Who or what first taught you what sex means? (i.e. parents, siblings, internet, television, etc.) How do you think that shaped your early view of sexuality?

3) Did you or other adolescents you knew engage in premarital sexual activity? (anything beyond kissing) If yes, how did you feel about this spiritually?

4) Give one word that most strongly resembles your feelings toward sexuality when you were a child.

5) Give one word that most strongly resembles your feelings toward sexuality when you were an adolescent.

6) As a child and as an adolescent, how did you think that God viewed sexuality? How did you think that the Church viewed sexuality? Please describe any specific experiences that led you to your beliefs.

That’s it for now. I’ll probably be posting some other surveys for book research in the future as I progress through the manuscript. Thanks in advance to anyone brave enough to share your experiences! If you prefer to have only me view your response but you would still like it to be anonymous, leave a comment with a fake name/email and ask me in the first sentence of your comment to change it from public to private view. If you don’t care if I see your name/email, feel free to email your comments to me at angel.e.bolka@gmail.com or send me a message on Facebook.

Here is an excerpt from my introduction about why I’m writing this book:

One of the side effects of removing all things that even hint at sexuality from your life is that when the time for marriage finally comes, you’re not quite sure what to think. I graduated from a conservative Christian college and realized soon after that times had changed for my friends and me. Several of us were in serious relationships, and engagements were on the horizon. Suddenly sex wasn’t some far-off taboo that needed to be avoided at all costs. It was approaching like an out-of-control freight train, and for the first time in our lives, we weren’t supposed to dive out of the way before any damage could be done.

I remember having a conversation with my boyfriend during our senior year of college. I told him how terrified I was to have sex – that I had spent my entire Christian life avoiding it and fearing it, and I didn’t know how I would be able to easily change my feelings about it once we got married. He was kind and sympathetic, but he also asked me to pray and think about how that transition to married life and sexual freedom could be healthy. Our conversation motivated me to begin researching healthy, married sex.

I found some great resources that taught how Christians could have fantastic married sex. The only problem was that most of those resources spent about two pages focusing on people like me – people who knew about sex and had all these great fantasies that sex would be wonderful, but in reality had no idea what they were getting into and were pretty scared to find out.

Some of the resources I found were quite graphic. They included diagrams of vaginas and cervixes. They encouraged readers – virgins and non-virgins alike – to take out a mirror and examine themselves. I was trying to wrap my mind around the idea of having happily married sex, but I was not ready to examine my cervix. First of all, the very thought of it was gross. Secondly, I still had strong impressions that sex – and everything that had to do with it – was bad. I wasn’t married yet, and I certainly didn’t want reading these books to bring even more temptation into my relationship with my boyfriend.

So I stopped researching and decided I would figure it all out later….

Basically, this book is the result of my “figuring it out later.” I’m writing it with the hope that others will be able to have a comprehensive resource in dealing with these kinds of issues a little more thoroughly before the honeymoon. It’s the book that I wish I had found. Now that I have some more free time, I’m hoping to get a completed manuscript finished within the next month or two. Your prayers and research support are greatly appreciated!

Tonsil Stone next to a penny

The penny was not in my throat.  That’s just there to give perspective on the monstrous size of the tonsil stone that was in my throat.  Since many people have never heard of tonsil stones, I’ll give you the run down.  They are essentially lumps of old food particles, bacteria, old mouth cells, and white blood cells.  (See more detailed info here.)  I have always had these things, for as long as I can remember, and thought they were a normal part of life that everyone deals with.  It makes sense, especially if you still have tonsils, like I do.  You eat food, you swallow most of it, some gets stuck and eventually goes down later.  Occasionally an old piece of food would come out (usually very small in size, like a speck) and it smelled really gross.  I still felt like that was normal.  After all, decayed, old food should probably smell pretty awful.  Then last year, I was at a family party and a big one (not quite as big as the one above) came out.  I showed it to Matt and a few other family members, not thinking much of it, other than it was funny that such a big one had formed before being broken down and swallowed.  I had even had a sore throat for the week before and thought I was getting sick, but after the “stone” came out, I realized it had just been rubbing on my throat every time I swallowed and had made my throat sore.  After Matt and all of my family members told me they did not think it was normal, they had never seen anything like that before, and I should go to the doctor, I decided to research it online.  I hate going to the doctor, so I do everything I can first to check stuff out before going.  It turned out that these weren’t as common as I thought (not everyone deals with them), but they are still fairly common.  After a bunch of research, I found out that they are more common for people who are lactose intolerant, and eating a lot of dairy contributes to them.  Also, alcohol contributes to them.  While I don’t drink alcohol, I am religious about my mouthcare routine, as anyone who has lived with me knows.  I was gargling mouthwash (with 20% alcohol content) twice a day every day, not realizing that was actually contributing to the problem.  I also am a huge dairy lover and over the past couple of years have ingested quite a lot of ice cream.  I eat cereal with milk almost every day and often drink milk throughout the day.  My mom has dealt with lactose intolerance for many years, and I was worried that someday I would develop it.  The increasing size of my tonsil stones seems to be indicating that that day has arrived.

Over the past year since that big stone came out at the family party, I knew in the back of my mind I probably should do something about my diet and start using a tongue scraper regularly (to help minimize the amount of bacteria at the back of the throat).  I didn’t know about the mouthwash problem until recently, but I had found that gargling diluted hydrogen peroxide helped clear them out, so I thought about doing that every day, but was too lazy.  Tonsil stones would form occasionally, but nothing major enough to change my habits.  Then that sucker in the picture above formed in the side of my throat.  It was hard, big, and stuck behind a little flap of skin that made it difficult for me to push it out with my tongue.  It stayed in there for over two weeks and drove me crazy.  In my desperation to get it out, I went back to researching online.  I found an amazing tonsil stones website that offered a lot of practical suggestions from a guy who also has had tonsil stones all his life.  That was the site that taught me about the mouthwash problem and recommended gargling with grapefruit oil extract to get rid of stones and keep them from forming.  I ordered some of the extract, started gargling with that and hydrogen peroxide every day, started using my tongue scraper regularly, and within a few days, the monstrosity came out.  I decided to take a picture of it to remind myself of how badly I needed to change my habits so these things stop forming.  A few days later, I switched to soy milk and am in the process of swearing off dairy ice cream forever.  (We still have a little left in the freezer, and I wouldn’t want it to go to waste ) Happily, I found some soy ice cream at Trader Joe’s yesterday which isn’t too bad.  It’s definitely not real ice cream, but it’s close enough to make me happy.

I've added grapefruit seed extract and hydrogen peroxide gargling to my daily routine

Trader Joe's Soy Creamy Mango Vanilla Flavor

Through it all, Matt has been the best husband.  Last night, my dietary changes and two weeks of regularly gargling GSE and HP paid off.  We were sitting in bed talking, reading, and watching “The Office,” and through it all I was pulling tonsil stones out and depositing them on kleenex.  Matt didn’t get mad or disgusted (that he let on, anyway).  He is very supportive and encouraging in the face of my smelly tonsils.  He even checked with a flashlight afterward to see if there were any more left.  Ahhh, true love.  And he has been drinking soy milk with me.  Quite the gentleman.

Look at all the vitamins in soy milk!

So now when I refrain from ice cream and milk in your presence, you’ll know why.  I’ll keep you updated on how the new diet goes, but won’t plan to post any new pictures of tonsil stones that come out unless we get some intense interest.  It really is pretty gross.  Hopefully this post is enough to explain without further need for disgusting photos.